R.K.

Narayan’s The Guide: A Study of Time and Space

*Prof. Seema Gupta

Research Scholar
Department of Mathematics and Humanities,
M.M.U.Mullana, Ambala

**Dr. Jyoti Syal

Supervisor
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics and Humanities,
M.M.U.Mullana, Ambala

***Dr. Bhim Singh Dahiya

Co-Supervisor
Retd. Professor
Department of English
Kurukshetra University
Kurukshetra
Abstract:
Time and Space are the important constituents of narrative fiction that decide the form that a
creative work takes. The very existence of the text depends on the manipulation of time and
space. The manner in which an artist manipulates the dimension of time is certainly one of
the most recognized features of his art and craft of fiction. Earlier when the time was thought
of as unidirectional irreversible flow, the structure of the narrative was linear with a well
made beginning, middle and an end. But unidirectional feature of time was refuted in favor of
circular time and the form of narrative remained no more linear. Every writer through the
movement of time and through its shifts and switches reveal the submerged self of his

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characters. The Guide is also considered as the most representative novel of R.K.Narayan
known for its narrative structure. The present paper proposes to analyze R.K.Narayan‘s
manipulation of time scheme in his most popular novel The Guide.

Key words: Time, Space, Analepsis, Prolepsis, Ellipsis, Heterodiegetic, Chronology

Article:
Time and Space are the important constituents of narrative fiction that decide the form that a
creative work takes. The very existence of the text depends on the manipulation of time and
space. The manner in which an artist manipulates the dimension of time is certainly one of
the most recognized features of his art and craft of fiction. Earlier when the time was thought
of as unidirectional irreversible flow, the structure of the narrative was linear with a well
made beginning, middle and an end. But unidirectional feature of time was refuted in favor of
circular time and the form of narrative remained no more linear. Every writer through the
movement of time and through its shifts and switches reveal the submerged self of his
characters. The Guide is also considered as the most representative novel of R.K.Narayan
known for its narrative structure. The present paper proposes to analyze R.K.Narayan‘s
manipulation of time scheme in his most popular novel The Guide.
Published in 1958, The Guide brought R.K.Narayan the Sahitya Academy Award and
universal acclaim. The novel narrates its story on two time grooves-- past and present. The
Guide is an autobiography of Raju who rises from humble origin and becomes a successful
tourist guide in Malgudi, a fictional small village in India. Raju‘s life is based on a series of
self-deceptions which ultimately leads the character down a road of confusion, loss of self
and then to spiritual transformation and awakening.
The novel tells the story of Raju‘s life from birth to death but it begins, not at the
beginning but in the middle of his life, or in media res. To convey the story, the novel uses
anachronies, memory, ellipsis, iterative and repetitive frequency, scene and pause, dual
narratives, multiple narrators, internal focalization, framing device and free indirect discourse
etc. The narration moves backward and forward in a zigzag manner. This plan gives the novel
two narratives happening in two different time frames for which Narayan employs two
different narrational levels---first person narration and third person narration. One narrative,

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which takes place in the past, told in first person narration, describes Raju‘s childhood, his
career as a tourist guide, his meeting with Rosie and Marco, and right up to his forgery and
imprisonment. Whereas the narrative which takes place in the present, told in third person
narration depicts Raju‘s life since his release from jail, his coming to the deserted temple, his
getting involved in the affairs of Velan and the villagers, their mistaking him as a saint, and
forcing a fast on him to end the drought. In order to make the analysis easier to comprehend,
the narrative belonging to the present of the narrator will be called the Narrative-I and the
narrative of past time will be called the Narrative-II.
The structure of the narrative is such that it makes the study of treatment of time an
essential component of analysis. In the narrative two time frames are running parallel to each
other and sometimes, they converge on each other. There are some occasions when time
frame of one narrative merges with the other narrative. At the same time, there are various
instances when within one narrative there are analeptic movements and sometimes, events are
narrated more than once. As the two parallel narratives alternate constantly, the story
continuously moves back and forth in time. Raju recollects his past unsequentially. He first
remembers Rosie, and then his childhood. Thus at least in the first part, the narrative deviates
from linear chronology. It is from the Ch.7 that the actual linear chronological act of
storytelling begins. The narrative deals with the polytemporal time in which the author
deliberately shuffles time in such a way that a reader is often looses track of all time
references at least in the first six chapters of the text. The novel challenges its expected
linearity in Raju‘s words when he tries to make sense of Rosie‘s incomprehensible account of
her breaking off with Marco:
I did not know how to pursue this enquiry. I had no method of eliciting information—
of all that had gone before. I fumbled and hummed and ha‘d in questioning, till I
suddenly felt that I was getting nowhere at all. I wanted a chronological narration, but
she seemed unable to provide it. She was swinging forwards and backwards and
talking in scraps. I was getting it all in a knot. I felt exasperated. (146)
Time is quite unspecific in The Guide. Narayan does not specifically state the time
period covered in the narrative. The novel begins two days after Raju‘s release from jail when
he meets Velan at an ancient shrine at sunset and ends on the eleventh day of his fast. The
novel has 247 pages. There is no constancy of pace i.e. the ratio between the story duration
and textual length is not fixed. The story covers more than thirty years of natural time. The

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narrative of past life of Raju covers about one hundred and seventy pages in the text. Chapter
three, five , seven , eight , nine , and ten are devoted to Raju‘s immediate past; chapter six
and eleven to immediate present; and chapters one, two and four is a medley of both past and
present. In this way the past and present are juxtaposed, the one serving to illuminate the
other. The narration moves backward and forward in a zigzag manner. There are three
analeptic movements in Ch.1. The narrative begins in the present but it quickly reaches the
recent past at Barber‘s shop, and the reader comes to know that Raju has just been released
from the prison. It is a piece of information which tells us about an event that has happened
before the beginning of the first narrative. So, this would be considered as an external
analepsis, the ‗reach‘ of which is two days and ‗extent‘ is few hours. Since the narrator is not
present in the analepsis, this would be considered as heterodiegetic external analepsis. The
narrative again moves back to the past after two pages of the text. The narrative pace is
extremely slow in the first chapter. The first chapter is highly descriptive. The reader is given
a glimpse of Raju‘s early life. The chapter is in a form of introduction where almost all the
characters are introduced. A descriptive pause describes Rosie and Marco in detail. The
narrator makes an observation that all his ―troubles would not have started but for Rosie,‖ (9)
and the information is shared with Velan at a later stage in the cause of narrating his life
story. If the narrative begins with a bifurcation of two time frames, it ends with a confluence.
There are few occasions when during the development of the narrative, both the time frames
merge into each other. Ch.1 deals with convergence when Raju tells the story of Devaka to
Velan but forgets midway. In order to tell the narratee how he became acquainted with the
story, the narrator Raju tells how he came across the story for the first time, and how during
his listening to the story from his mother he used to sleep in the mid course. Though for a
small time period, the Narrative-I which is primarily about the narrator‘s contemporary time,
tells an incident that belongs to the Narrative-II .Since the narrative shifts back to past, this
event can also be looked at as an external analepsis.
Chapter two again begins with the past when a railway track is going to be built in
Malgudi in front of the house of homodiegetic narrator. This homediegetic external analepsis
covers almost six pages and describes every minute detail of the narrator‘s going to pyol
school and then to the Board High school. In this portion of the text Narayan uses the
simplest technique, that of spotlight. He concentrates attention for a considerable time on
various aspects of an old-fashioned town – hut shops, alleyways, horse drawn carriages and

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references to pre–independence social reality--- Raju‘s father prefers to send him pyol school
rather than to ―the fashionable Albert Mission School because it seems they try to convert our
boys into Christians and are all the time insulting our gods‖ (25).
At the same time, there are few occasions when time in Narrative-II moves back, and
observes a few analepsis. Ch.7 describes the events which lead to the rejection of Rosie by
Marco. Ultimately Rosie had to come at Raju‘s house. The narrative jumps to another time
sequence and creates an explicit ellipsis of thirty days which is later filled by an internal
analepsis when Rosie tells Raju the whole story of the last thirty days. She narrates the whole
sequence of her coming to Raju‘s house. Out of thirty days, two days are described in four
and half pages and twenty eight days are given to two pages only. This analepsis tells an
event of two days that occurred thirty days before; we can say that the ―reach‖ of this
analepsis is thirty days and extent is two days. As the whole of the incident had taken place
after the starting of Narrative-II, this would be called internal analepsis. But being a part of
Narrative–II the embedded story narrated by Rosie would also be called hypodiegetic
narrative which performs the explicative function in the narrative.
Besides analepsis, the narrative also observes some proleptic movements. In proleptic
mode, Rosie‘s future plans are indicated when one day Rosie asked him if he was interested
in dancing and Raju promptly replied that he loved the art and would do anything to see her
dance. Rosie brightened up and was full of plans.
―At five in the morning she‘d start her practice and continue for three hours. She
would have a separate hall, long enough…….She would then spend an hour or two in
the forenoon studying the ancient works of art…..because without a proper study of
the ancient methods it would be impossible to keep the purity of the classical forms . .
. ‖ (122-123).
Another proleptic movement occurs in Ch.8 when ―while watching Rosie do her practice‖
Raju thinks ― I seemed to get a clear notion of what I should be doing….I felt that I was once
again becoming a man of importance‖ (158). So there are various proleptic movements in the
narrative when time moves forward and the main characters find themselves involved in their
future plans.
Besides these temporal dislocations, there are other temporal aberrations in the
narrative pertaining to frequency and rhythm. The narration of the story of his past took Raju
all the night. The reader is informed by the heterodiegetic narrator that ―Raju had mentioned

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without a single omission every detail from his birth to his emergence from the gates of the
prison‖ (232).The past events when recounted are shortened and summarized, and events
covering over thirty years‘ time are told in one night. As already stated, the narration of past
life of Raju covers about one hundred and seventy pages in the text. At the same time, the
deceleration pace in the novel is in the last chapter where longer text space is devoted for
short duration of story time. Fifteen pages are taken to describe twelve days action. The story
time moves very slow.
During the process there are certain events which have been narrated more than once
and at the same time, there are events which happened more than once but are narrated only
once. Thus in terms of frequency the narrative has both iterative and repetitive narration.
Ch.7 is remarkable for its iterative narration when Raju narrates how Rosie suffered from
guilt complex and compensated her husband for the loss of wifely devotion and fidelity. Raju
narrates ―Sometimes she said, ―I‘ll stay on here and keep you company‖. And Marco
acknowledged it in an absent minded, casual manner, ―All right if you like. Well Raju, are
you staying on or going……‖.‖ (114)The description of this guilt complex though described
once continues for almost over a month.
Similarly in Narrative – I, the narratee is told ―By the time he arrived at the stage of
stroking his beard thoughtfully, his prestige had grown beyond his wildest dreams. His life
had lost its personal limitations; his gatherings had become so large that they overflowed into
the outer corridors …….‖ (53), which also signifies the same iterative frequency of the
narrative. This sequence suggests that villagers used to come to Raju at pillared hall but their
visit has been narrated only once. By narrating the event once the author saves himself and
his narrative from being condemned as a narrative with redundancy. The reference of
―R.N28‖ and ―the snake woman‖ for Rosie is an example of repetitive frequency of the
narrative because these are referred several times by the narrator. In Ch.6 when the
omniscient narrator informs the reader about the ritual performed by Raju during fast is again
an example of repetitive narration as it is mentioned almost three times towards the end of the
novel.
Ellipsis is another feature which can be observed in the narrative. In Ch.11 the
narrative jumps to another time sequence without narrating events chronologically but the
gap created is filled after one page when the reader is informed in detail and given a true
account of Raju‘s psychology during the early days of his fast. Similarly in Ch.7 a gap

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created is filled after a few pages and we are given a detailed account of Marco‘s attitude
towards Rosie after he came to know of illegitimate relationship between Rosie and Raju.
Having no alternative Rosie had to come to Raju‘s house. Thus the time period account
which is earlier skipped is fulfilled later. Krishna Sen rightly says that ―in The Guide, the past
does not always unfold in strict chronological order, but follows the vagaries of memory and
the immediate need to illuminate some point that Raju is making to Velan‖(K.S 15). He
further says that there are two narratives nestling one inside the other and the link between
these two narratives is the device of Raju‘s confession. ―While telling his present
predicament to Velan, Raju goes back to those points of the past which he thinks will explain
his present.‖ (K.S.15) Thus when he tries to explain to Velan why he is so popular among the
villagers, Raju goes back to the beginning of his career as a tourist guide:
I came to be called Railway Raju. Perfect strangers, having heard of my name, began
to ask for me when their train arrived at the Malgudi railway station. It is written on
the brow of some that they shall not be left alone. I am one such, I think. Although I
never looked for acquaintances, they somehow came looking for me. (55)
The progression of the time is sometimes marked by the physical changes in the
character and the meteorological changes in the weather as also indicated by harvest periods,
festival time and changing position of the sun, rain and mist and the cycle of season. During
his swamihood his ―beard now caressed his chest, his hair covered his back and around his
neck he wore a necklace of prayer beads. His eyes shone with softness and compassion, the
light of wisdom emanated from them.‖ (79) Towards the end, the narrative enters the phase
of timelessness when Raju forgets the movement of clock time and enters the world of
eternity. He realizes the meaning of life and surrenders himself to the cause of humanity. He
thinks, ―If by avoiding food I should help the trees bloom, and the grass grow, why not do it
thoroughly?‖(213) and the narrative ends with the indication of rebirth, ―they hold him as if
he were a baby.‖ (247)
The Use of anachronies in The Guide not only acts as a narrative to unravel the past
and explore consciousness but also contribute to its narrative pattern. In fact his technique is
somewhat similar to Gunter Grass when he says, ―you can begin a story in the middle and
create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward.‖(17) By juxtaposing the past
and the present, the narrative closely reflects the working of a human mind. This time-shift
which occurs more than once in several chapters proves challenging for the reader. In the first

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chapter alone the narration moves between first and third person point of view four times.
The succeeding ten chapters also follow this pattern. This time-shift technique proves so
effective in that the story becomes a kind of tapestry in the hands of Narayan. Narayan
himself gives a hint in the embedded narration of Rosie that ―a chronological order of
narration is not always effective nor it is the usual mode: sometimes even swinging forward
and backward and talking in scraps can give a story all in knot.‖ (128-129) As Fakrul Alam
says, ―When complicated human emotions are involved, a linear narrative or a clear
perspective or neat conclusion will not always do‖(17). Laxmi Mani also says, ―A single
center of consciousness cannot achieve Narayan‘s purpose of projecting the protean reality
inherent in the novel‖ (130). It is because Narayan adopts an unusual narrative strategy in The
Guide.
Thus Narayan uses various narratological devices as memory, flashback, flash on,
embedded stories, dual narrative, multiple narrators etc. in his novel The Guide. Time is
interlinked with memory. Narayan allows the reader a glimpse into the past through the
characters‘ memories. It is the polytemporal time, where there is a constant shift from past to
present and then to future, which is predominant in the novel. In the narrative the past is
defined in terms of Raju‘s memories, and future in terms of the protagonists‘ expectations.
Raju in the beginning exists within a clock-bound world while towards the end of the novel
transcends the limit imposed by clock time. Here Narayan deals with the world of
psychological time as he defies linearity by making the order of the events variable.

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 Works cited:
Alam, Fakrul. ―Narrative Strategies in Two Narayan Novels‖, in R.K.Narayan: Critical
Perspectives, ed. A. L. McLeod, New Delhi: Sterling, 1994.
Booth, Wayne. C. The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Print
Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Oxford:
Cornell University Press, 1983. Print.
Grass, Gunter. The Tin Drum. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Luchterhand, 1961. Print.
Narayan, R.K. The Guide, Indian Thought Publications, Chennai, 1980. Print
Sen, Krishna. Critical Essays on R.K.Narayan’s The Guide: With an Introduction to
Narayan’s Novels. Kolkata: Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd., 2004. Print.

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